Tag Archives: mobile wireless communications

Transmitting large amounts of data with incredible speed over long distances without any connecting wires is an extremely complex. The numbers of devices that are now carried around to use, browse and transmit data have increased considerably over the years and so have their users. This has been made possible due to one of the major advancements in technology has been the development of mobile wireless communications.

Who could have imagined that mobile phones would turn out to be one of the most powerful and popular devices that are commonly used when they first started out with the first generation technology? Since the first generation of phones came out the amount of data that you can transmit has greatly increased and now brought us into the 4G technology. Earlier mobile or cellular phones could only transmit voice or text messages. However, today that is virtually undermined when looking at purchasing a mobile phone. The 3G revolution made video calling and video transmission easily available at a decent. With today’s mobile devices you can surf the internet at high speeds and even watch tv.

When phones became smart and Smartphones became a rage, the technology of mobile wireless communications brought your desktop onto your Smartphone screens. Browsing the internet, documents, sending and receiving large data, video calling, e-mail, social networking and many more activities that required you to be connected using a desktop or a laptop are now available on a Smartphone. Most people use their mobile phone for more than just talking to texting, so the screens became bigger thanks to the ‘touch screen’ invention.

Tablet PC’s are now a trendy way of having a computer that connects you to the world in the size of a book that places easily in your hands. Thanks to mobile wireless technology you now have access on your phone to work and communicate when you are on the move. Offices and organizations have also brought in this wireless technology to make it easier for their employees to transfer information and communicate effectively with speed and accuracy.

Mobile wireless communications has altered the way we are connected, live and work. The cyber world is a virtual atmosphere that everyone wants to be a part of and wireless devices help one to lead this virtual life along with his physical survival in a parallel and convenient manner.

Radio frequency based communications has made mobile wireless communications possible. Radio frequency or RF communications have been around for quite some time. Depending on the frequency of the RF waves used for communications, they propagate around in different ways. Early and popular applications were the radio broadcasting systems around the world. Thanks to the radio we are able to have entertainment and educational material right in our home.

The different broadcasting stations were dependent on different frequency ranges, were apparent from the fact that when you wanted to tune to these stations, different frequency bands were to be used. There were the medium wave as well as many shortwave bands. This system was limited in mobility. The radio receiver could move anywhere; broadcast stations were static. Emergency services and police mostly used this type of communication in a mobile setting. Both the transmitters and receivers could be moved around.

Since televisions use a frequency that is higher, they want to be sure that the receiving stations can be seen by the transmitting towers. This system too had limited mobility where the TV receivers were meant to be located at homes of people. The mobile wireless communications market was completely changed thanks to the appearance of cellular phones. Like the TV systems, these mobile communications systems depend on higher frequencies. Transmission stations or the base stations (as they are called in cellular communication systems) need to be visible to the phones communicating through the base station towers. They must have the visibility so they use the towers. Higher the tower, larger is the distance from which it can reach the mobile handsets.

The evolution of the cellular and mobile phone systems has carried us into the 3rd generation or 3G system. A fourth generation or the 4G mobile phones have started to launch around the globe. The biggest change we have seen from the mobile phones is that they are no longer being used only for voice communication, but instead have become computing devices. The evolution into 3G and 4G is focused on facilitating this need for communicating data all over the world. These highly capable mobile handsets use mobile wireless communications and are able to tap into the Internet.

While mobile handsets are acquiring computing device-like capabilities, computing devices are evolving to become completely mobile. They bring in data based capabilities, computing features and some calling features. With the newest tablets out there mobile wireless communications are consistently changing and adapting.

Wireless communication is, as the name suggests, communication between devices which are not physically connected with the help of wires. An assortment of these we utilize in our everyday life such as remotes for the TV or toy cars, cellphones, walkie-talkies, PDAs, or even radio devices. The most recent use that wireless communication technology has been put to is the variety of wireless headphones, keyboards and even your mouse for computers, and also the GPS tracking in your car which tells you the best route to your destination. Most people when they think of wireless communications immediately think of cell phones or mobile wireless communications.

Martin Cooper is considered to be the father of mobile wireless communications. In 1973 he succeeded in making the first call from a wireless telecommunications device. The cell phone has seen a lot of change and evolution since then. Receiving and making calls were the only thing that the first cell phone was able to do; very different from the phones today which have so many components. They can not only make and receive calls, but also has a host of very advanced features such as internet connectivity, thanks to the Wireless Application Protocol or WAP and other such technologies. The talk time on phones today is over 30 hours on some phones, compared to the 35 minutes back then it is a huge advancement.

Early cell phones, or as we can call them the first generation or 1G cell phones, used to depend on the analog TDMA or Time-Division Multiple Access technology alone for communication; then came the 2G or second generation of mobile phones, which depended on the CDMA and the GSM technologies. This feature allowed the 2G phones to be able to use the voice analog signals along with the data digital signals. This revolutionized the whole idea of mobile wireless communications, as the PDAs and GPRS and WAP came into the picture. The phones now are much more portable thanks to their smaller size. Also, as the carriers were now able to guarantee non-interference of signals over an area even with increased subscribers, mobile usage increased dramatically.

Now we are entering the third and fourth generation of mobile communications, more regularly known as 3G and 4G. These would provide features like WLAN and WiMAX which would enable all the future devices to have exclusive IP addresses. We have come a long way since Martin Cooper brought mobile wireless communications to the world with his advancement of the mobile phone.